By Abigail Anthony
Friday, July 18, 2025
In the United Kingdom, someone who uttered supposedly
right-wing speech might spend more time in prison than a person convicted of
horrific crimes, even if the government has acknowledged the evidence
supporting their statements. But just how bad is the speech environment? The
two-tier discrepancies are visible at every level of the legal system.
Legal punishment first requires that the authorities
choose to arrest an individual, which they are all too happy to do. As reported by the Telegraph, U.K. police make over
12,000 arrests a year — more than 30 a day — under the Malicious Communications
Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003. What types of evil speech are
prosecuted under these policies? Billy Thompson was arrested after a civilian officer, acting as an intelligence researcher,
snapped a screenshot of his online post; he was sentenced to prison for twelve
weeks under the Communications Act 2003. Thompson had left a comment online
that said, “filthy ba*****s” with the emojis of an ethnic person and a gun, in
which Judge John Temperley suspected “a racial element to the messaging and the posting of these
emojis” that had to be “viewed in the context of the current civil unrest.”
This was a reference to the nationwide riots that followed the tragic day when
teenager Axel Rudakubana stabbed three young girls to death during a dance
class.
By contrast, arrests for in-person (as opposed to online)
expression often occur under “hate crime” and public (dis)order laws, which are
disparately enforced with respect to perceived political leaning. Eleven police
officers, evidently lacking anything better to do in London, arrested activist
Montgomery Toms because he counter-protested an LGBTQ+ demonstration by wearing
a large board that had on it the transgender-pride flag, the equal sign, and
the words “mental illness.” A police officer was filmed telling Toms that the
sign “is going to antagonize,” “is going to cause friction within this crowd,”
and “is going to cause a problem.” (Toms spent about nine hours in jail, has
been released on bail, and has not yet been charged, although videos from the arrest
show an officer saying his sign is “likely to cause harassment, alarm, or
distress,” which is language taken from the Public Order Act 1986.) By contrast, the police in London
made no arrests when LGBTQ+ activists released 6,000 crickets into the audience
of a conference held by the gender-critical LGB Alliance. Instead, those six
activists either fled or were “held by security for a period before being let
go,” according to a statement by the group “Trans Kids Deserve Better” that
accepted responsibility for — and even boasted about coordinating — the
infestation.
Indeed, the litmus test for “disorder” is not disruption
or violence, but rather whether you offend leftists — even by merely being
visible. A
Met Police officer told a man wearing a kippah that he looked “openly
Jewish” and would be escorted away from a pro-Palestinian protest because there
might be a “reaction,” and if the Jewish man chose to remain, he would be
arrested because his “antagonizing” presence would constitute a “breach of peace.”
After outrage, the Met Police assistant commissioner released an “apology”
saying that the Jewish guy going near leftists was, you know, asking for it:
“In recent weeks we’ve seen a new trend emerge, with those opposed to the main
protests appearing along the route to express their views. The fact that those
who do this often film themselves while doing so suggests they must know that their
presence is provocative, that they’re inviting a response and that they’re
increasing the likelihood of an altercation” (emphasis mine). The Met
Police then apologized for the apology, saying, “Being Jewish is not a
provocation. Jewish Londoners must be able to feel safe in this city.”
And thus arrests seem uniquely targeted toward expression
— including just standing around — that can be dubiously construed as
right-wing, inadequately left-leaning, or simply sufficiently upsetting to
leftists. In the rare event that a progressive is arrested, the punishment is
often significantly lighter. Judge Tan Ikram sent James Watts to prison for 20
weeks for sending memes mocking George Floyd to a group chat, but the same
judge — who was caught liking a LinkedIn post that said “Free Palestine” — gave
no punishment to three women who were found guilty of charges under the
Terrorism Act because they wore jackets bearing Hamas-inspired images of
paragliders to a pro-Palestinian demonstration. The disparate sentencing
applied by individual judges is further evident when comparing rulings for
supposedly harmful speech to gross sexual conduct that is sure to have a
lasting psychological impact. Judge Rupert Lowe sentenced Ryan Ferguson to nine months in jail on a charge of racially aggravated
abuse for shouting comments with the word “c**n” at a football player, yet gave
no jail time to Nicholas Chapman, a doctor who
repeatedly put his semen in coffee and gave it to a woman. Lowe told
Ferguson, “You should be ashamed to represent a part of the ongoing problem of
racism,” but told Chapman, “You are an intelligent professional of previous
good character with good references.” (Chapman’s victim disagrees, since she stated,
“I have to accept that the mental and emotional trauma I have suffered
throughout this will always remain with me in some way.”)
Ridiculously, speech about horrific sexual conduct
may face harsher consequences than actually facilitating sexual abuse. Abdul
Rauf served only two and a half years of a six-year sentence for trafficking
and conspiracy; the judge stated there were between ten and 20 occasions when
Rauf drove a 15-year-old girl in his taxi to an apartment, where he and other
men “had sex” with her. (Rauf was stripped of citizenship and ordered to return
to Pakistan, but he stuck around, and he now works in the same city where he
trafficked.) By contrast, Lee Crisp was sentenced to three years and four
months for “high octane” shouting at police surrounding a hotel housing
asylum seekers, including statements such as “Take your f***ing uniform off,”
“Sex offending bastards, BBC bastards,” and “You’re protecting the bastards who
are raping our kids.”
Not only was Crisp sentenced to more time behind bars
than Rauf actually spent there, but his comments are now consistent with the
government’s position. In June, the United Kingdom’s rapid audit (dubbed
the “Casey Report”) on “group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse”
concluded that the ethnicity is not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators in
“grooming gangs” nationally, but found several local data sets showing
significant overrepresentation of South Asian men. An investigation in
Rotherham, for example, found that 62 percent of convicted perpetrators in the
gangs had a Pakistani background, despite making up only about 4 percent of the
town’s population. Moreover, the Casey Report refutes a 2020 paper by the Home
Office that claimed white men are a majority of the offenders, writing, “This
audit found it hard to understand how the Home Office paper reached that
conclusion, which does not seem to be evidenced in research or data.” The data
on victims are similarly sparse. The report stated that the ethnicity for a
majority of victims is “unknown,” but a majority of the victims for whom race
is known are white. Importantly, the Casey Report acknowledged that the police
— along with other authorities and organizations — failed to deliver justice,
in part because they feared trends in the perpetrator demographics would prompt
accusations of racism.
Crisp isn’t the only person doing time for pointing out
that the police have protected South Asian men who horrifically exploited young
girls — even though the government has acknowledged the data substantiate such
claims. Derek Heggie was sentenced to just under a year behind bars for
“grossly offensive” comments he made on YouTube, such as stating that “young
white girls are being raped by these grooming gangs that worship the Prophet
Muhammad.” Michael Whitehead was sentenced to two years and eight months in
prison because he was “shouting racist abuse” at an anti-immigration riot
outside of a hotel housing asylum-seekers, yelling things like “paedophiles” and furthering shouting “you’re not fit to
wear the badge” at a police officer. Peter Lynch was sentenced to two years and
eight months in 2024 because he “waved conspiracy theory placards” and
“screamed abuse at police” outside of a hotel housing asylum seekers in
Rotherham. Lynch shouted, “You are protecting people who are killing our kids
and raping them” at officers.
Comments about the child-rape gangs should be protected
speech — even if they were or are factually incorrect. Now that the government
has published a national audit that recognizes the overrepresentation of South
Asian men in grooming gangs as well as repeated failures by the authorities
because appropriate action might have generated accusations of “racism,” there
are people in prison for expression that is consistent with what the government
itself published. Unfortunately, urging the United Kingdom to release them is
perhaps a futile effort. Lynch — married for 36 years, father to four, and
grandfather to three — was found hanging dead in prison.
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